


Meeting in Passing

by Treerat



Category: Zootopia (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Multi, Near Death Experiences, New life paths, dreamscape
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-27
Updated: 2019-01-07
Packaged: 2019-07-18 07:17:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16113515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Treerat/pseuds/Treerat
Summary: Two dying mammals meet in one's dreamscape.





	1. Chapter 1

                                                            Meeting in Passing

 

               The snow leopard doctor, Theo Dodson, put down his pen, leaned back in his chair, and rubbed his eyes with his paw.

               “Damned day shift is a pain for a nocturnal type,” he said to himself.

               He looked down at the official document; all the places were filled out except one.

               “And it won’t be long before I’ll have that.”

               The feline continued looking at the document.  His feelings, when he allowed them, on the death of a patient tended to fall into one of two categories; sad/tragic or relieving/releasing.  Thing was, this was one of those rare cases where the patient fell into both.  He shook his head; it didn’t make sense.  The patient’s injuries were bad but not that life threatening.  The surgery done on him was a success by any measure but, for some reason, he was not recovering. The beep of his intercom interrupted his musing.

 

 

               As far as the fox’s eyes could see, the landscape was a mix of meadows, hills, and light woods.  And on the far horizon, snowcapped mountains could be seen.  Dashing here and there, he stopped to scent the air or poke his nose about in the grass close to the ground to check out a particularly interesting aroma.  His ears flicked about at the sound of many insects in or on the grass and other plants.  Now and then, he raised his head high and, with his nose stuck as far up as possible, breathed in the air wafting by, relishing the scents.  All of it, the scents, vistas, and feeling of unlimited freedom enchanted him to the point of near intoxication.

               Suddenly, his head comes up and he calls all of his senses to full alert.  Ears move this way and that while eyes scan the ground to the horizon as his keen nose seeks the scent that announced the presence of something…someone intruding into this place.  Going into a low crouch, the fox slow steps in a weaving pattern as he tries to locate the entity.  All of his predatory instincts are sharpened, ready to trigger into attack mode should it be needed.  Minutes pass as the vulpine carefully searches, then…

               “There, that grass, some of it is down.  Like something, or someone, is lying in it,” he thought.

               Head low and eyes on the target area, the hunting tod takes one slow and cautious step at a time towards his prey’s hiding place.  Every few steps his tail does a short quick sweep of excitement as he closes in.  His legs quiver as their muscles tighten in anticipation of...

               “POUNCE!!”

               He felt the bunny he landed on quiver and tense but remain still.  It trembled some more as the fox poked his nose into its fur to feel it and to inhale the bunny’s intriguing scent.  She smelled clean, fresh, and…something else he could not identify.  But, whatever it was he could not get enough of it.  After nosing the bunny for a couple of moments the fox began lightly nibbling through the soft fur of the doe’s pelt.  He noted that she was about two-thirds his own size, much bigger than the wild four pawed bunnies that lurked somewhere in a dim recess of his memory.

                “Do it!” he heard.

                The tod hesitates for a heartbeat, then resumes his nibble grooming of her fur, breathing in her attractive scent.

                “Do it!” she repeated.

                “Do what?” he asked, his voice muffled in her fur.

                “Kill me.  Eat me.  Finish me!” she uttered.

                Was she kidding?!  The feel and scent of her had any of those…’requests’ the furthest from his mind!  Still, he was intrigued.

                “And why would such a lovely young bunny want to be my red meat lunch?” he asked.

                “Because my life isn’t worth living anymore!”

                 The vehemence of her statement surprised him.

                 “Oh, are you crippled to the point that everything has to be done for you?” he asked.

                 “No.”

                 “No?  Have you lost your one true Love?” the vulpine inquired.

                 “No, there never was one,” she replied.

                  A light nibble at the base of one of her ears produced a small tremor in the rabbit’s body.

                 “Young, not disabled, no lover, yet,” the fox recited.  “So why do you want to die?”

                  He felt the shaking of her body increase in intensity over a few more heartbeats.

                  “Because my life is…gray, dull, boring!  The career I want, have wanted since I was nine, is closed off to me!  I want to make the world a better place in a way that is more than just farming but, now, it’s gone away!” she fairly weeps.

                   A part of the tod empathized with the doe, that was why he was here.  Still, there was so much life in this one.  The bunny squealed in surprise when she found herself flipped up into the air and then huffed when landing belly down squarely on the fox’s back.  Instinctively, her arms went around the vulpine’s neck to steady herself.

                   “Hold on, Fluff.  We’re going for a tour!” she heard.

                   And, at a speed that astonished the rabbit, they were off.

 

                    The tod felt the wind rush by his ears and all through his face fur as he came up to speed.  “Speed” was something that a pack of cheetahs would be seriously envious of.  The back corners of his mouth pull up at the feel of those warm arms wrapped tightly around his neck.

                    “For someone who wants to end things, she doesn’t want to fall off,” he thought as his legs eat up stretches of distance at speed truly impossible for him in the real world.

                     With the air cramming itself into his nostrils, the aromas carried by it had greater intensity.

 

                     The doe hung on for dear life!  Her head was on the left side of the fox’s neck so her field of vision was limited to that side.  But what she saw, and scented, was impressive.  The low grass flew by so swiftly that it looked like a solid green carpet.

                    “Wait!  How can that be?  A moment ago it was at least two feet tall!” she thought.

                     The fox ran, and ran, and RAN!  A dash through a section of forest lasted for a couple of eye blinks and just enough time for her to smell the aroma of living wood.  Past that, they shot through a batch of rolling hills.  A wide river blocked their path and she thought he would either stop or turn one way or the other to avoid it.  He didn’t.

                     “YEEP!” she yelped.

                      Closing her eyes tight, the young doe waited for the feel of cold water.  When it didn’t happen, she opened them…and saw that he was running on the liquid surface.

                      “How…how?” she stammered.

                       Her answer, both heard and felt, was a yip laugh from her ride.

                       “This is my dreamscape, Flufftail!  Here, _anything_ is possible!” he stated.

                       When he hit the side of a mountain and scaled it without the least bit of slipping or sliding, she was ready to believe him!

                        Reaching the top, the very high top, the tod stopped and sat down on his haunches.  The bunny released her death hold on his neck and slid down onto the white covering of packed snow.  The air was cold and crisp and she saw a small dual stream of frosted moisture come from her nose each time she exhaled.  The view was incredible!

                         “By the Maker!  I swear I can see for hundreds of miles!” the doe thought.

                         “Enjoying what you see?” the fox asked.

                         “Yes!  It’s so unlike home!”

                          “Hmmmm, how far have you ever been from there!” he asked.

                           Pause.

                           “Fifty miles, if that,” came the reply.

                           “So, you’ve never seen much of the world.”

                           “Only in pictures in books and on the Net.”

                           The vulpine took a few seconds, weighing his next words.

                          “Why haven’t you?” he asked, at last.  “Aren’t you of age?”

                           “I’m 22.”

                           “Then, what’s stopping you from going out to see things for yourself?”

                           He watched her nibble at her own lip as she thought.

                           “There’s…so much to be done on our farm…,” came her answer.

                           “Is there no one else to help?  Do you have only a few relatives, siblings, to help?  Is your family struggling so that they cannot hire any?”

                            She snorted.

                            “I have 88 siblings!  And my family isn’t poor!  We have at least a dozen hired paws at all times!”

                            He waited, letting what she had said, hopefully, to sink into her mind.

                            “Then, from the sound of things, they don’t have a real need for you to be there,” he pointed out.  “So, once more, why do you stay when you don’t want to?”

                             Her expression was impassive for a bit.  Then, it became stricken…woebegone.

                             “They…they pulled the Mammal Inclusion Initiative!  Everything I’ve worked for, my dream of being a police mammal, GONE!” she cried.

                             The vulpine’s ears cocked this way and that as he listened to the soft sobbing of the bunny.  Then…

                            “So?” he asked.

                            “Huh?  Wh…What do you m…mean by ‘so’?” she said.

                            “So.  One path, a narrow one at that, is blocked to you.  Along with farming, are they the only life paths for you to take?”

                            There was confusion in those lovely amethyst colored eyes.

                            “What…do you mean?” she asked.

                            “Turn around to where you are facing away from me,” he directed.

                            The rabbit did so.  Paws came up to the sides of her head and were placed so that she could only see what was straight ahead of her.

                            “Is this all there is to the world?” she heard him ask.

                            “No,” she replied.

                            “Why is it not?  After all, it is all you can see, isn’t it?”

                             The lapin turned her head one way to the point that the hand there was forced to move to bring more of the scene into view.  Then she turned her head the other direction to do the same.

                             “No, it isn’t,” she said.

                              The paws withdraw.

                             “Yet, you limit yourself to just two choices: one you dislike, the other closed to you,” the fox said.

                             The rabbit knew what he was getting at, but….

                             “I want to do something to help make the world a better place, even if only a little bit each day,” she said.

                             “Farming, growing food for oneself and others…”

                             “I want more than that!” the doe interrupted.

                              “Then, there are so many other ways to do that,” he said. “Medical work, social work, research into so many things that can help, even inspire…”

                     The fox stopped as an idea came to him.  He stretched one arm out towards the horizon, then moved it upwards and sideways.  Like drawing a great curtain of black silk, darkness was pulled across the sky to replace the daylight.  But, that darkness was, for lack of a better term, relative in that it contained pinpoints, small blobs, and even great stretches of glowing light.  The bunny gazed up in wonder at the display of starlight.  She had memories of seeing something like this on cold clear nights at home but this was so much more…vivid.

                    “’Reach for the stars’,” the tod quoted. “Meaning, ‘Have high, ambitious, and great aims...goals’.  Or, in other words, ‘Go big or go home!’.”

                     Despite the darkness, the fox could clearly see the expression of confusion on the bunny’s face.

                     “I don’t understand,” she said.

                     “Take the saying, literally,” he said. “Broaden your life path.  Make it as big as the sky itself!”

                     The bunny thought over what he said for several seconds.

                     “Be an astronomer?” she said.

                     “And as many of the sciences connected to it as possible.  Astrophysics, geology, mathematics, chemistry, even biosciences.  All of them have an effect on the world we live in.  Look beyond our world and grapple with the Universe itself.”

                      He paused for effect.

                     “Then, take it one step further.”

                     “Further?  How?”

                     “Write about it,” he replied.

                     “If you’re a scientist you have to write science papers anyway,” she pointed out.

                     “I’m suggesting the other kind of writing.  The kind that helps fire the imagination and inspires others.  Stories of mammals going to places far out from this world.  Tales of wondrous worlds that await those whom are willing and determined enough to reach for them.  Sagas of the imagination that have the science to get there imbedded within them.”

                      He watched her, and seeing the look in her face and eyes told him he had her thinking.

                     “Good sign,” the vulpine thought.

                      What he was doing amazed him.  Except for two people, both now dead, he had never cared enough to want to help someone with a problem like this rabbit’s.

                      “Be one heck of a hustle if she takes it,” he thought.

                     “Study hard, do the work, oh bunny.  It will not be easy, nothing of real worth is.  You may be small in stature compared to so many other mammals but there should be nothing small about your abilities, determination, and desires to do great things,” he said. “Then, go out and inspire others to do equally great, if not greater, things.  Be that mammal others want to be like, even surpass.”

                      She looked to the fox, then lifted her head and did a slow scan of the wonders in the sky above her.  When her attention returned to him, her decision was made and he could see that.  Then, her expression changed, becoming thoughtful as she looked at him.

                    “Why are you here?” she asked.

                     The question caught the tod by surprise.

                     “Huh?”

                     “I came here to die,” she pointed out.

                      The doe eyed him up and down then returned her gaze to his.

                      “You are not Frith’s black rabbit, his collector of the dead.  Were you that you would not have tried to talk me out of dying,” she said.  “So, again, why are you here?”

                       He didn’t answer.  The ghost of a smile crept onto her lips.

                      “You are here for the same reason I am…was.”

                       An uncomfortable, for the fox, silence dragged on for a while.

                      “So, are you an old mammal, at the end of your years?” she asked.

                      Pause.

                     “No.  No, I am not.  I’m 28.”

                     “Why did I say that?!” he thought.

                     “Diseased or crippled?” she asked.

                     Reluctant head shake.

                    “Destitute?”

                    Thinking of the nine-hundred thousand plus dollars he had laid back, he shook his head once more.

                    “Then, what is your reason to die?”

                    Seconds pass, then the vulpine sighs.

                   “I am…weary of this life.  My only true friend has died.  And I have no family left,” he said in a tired voice.

                   He saw her cock her head to one side, giving him an unreadable look.

                  “’no family left’,” she quoted. “So, you are the last of your bloodline.”

                  There was no missing what that meant.

                 “I have siblings who will…already are, carrying on my family’s bloodline…” she said.

                  She let that one hang in the air as she closed the small distance between them.  Very close now, those hand paws ‘walked’ up his chest until her eyes were level with his own.  He could not get over how lovely their color was.

                 “So, mister young fox, can you, will you, take to yourself the advice you have given to me?” he heard her say.

                 “’No good deed goes unpunished’ Marc Twine said,” reminded a part of him. “And she does have you there.”

                 “Or…unbalanced,” the tod thought back. “And, yes, she does.”

                 “A new path, one not easy nor previously ‘’traveled’,” he said aloud.

                 The bunny nodded.

                “You would have me take one.  You do the same.  A new life for each to travel.”

                 As he thought that over, the vulpine remembered old dreams of his younger years.  A time before the limiting ‘realities’ of life had soured him.

                 “Are they really limits?  Or did I just allow them to be?” he questioned.

                 Seconds later, he nods to the rabbit, this bunny doe who showed a mind as agile as his own.

                 “One thing,” he said.

                 "Yes?”

                 “Should we meet in the real world I would like to continue this conversation,” he said.

                 She touched her nosepad to his.

                 “I look forward to it,” she said.

                 Backing off some, the doe looked around, a puzzled expression on her face.

                “How do I…”

                “Just lie down like normal, close your eyes, and relax,” the fox prompted.

               The questioning look he got made him let go a yip of amusement.

               “Remember, my dreamscape, so that’s how it works when one wants to leave it to return to the…’mortal’ world.”

               “Okay,” she said, after a few seconds.

               The bunny fem settled herself down on the snow and, after one more look at the vulpine, closed her eyes.  Moments later, her breathing slowed as sleep took hold.  Not long afterwards, the tod saw her form slowly become translucent then transparent and then fade away completely.

               “Good luck, do well, Carrots,” he said to the now empty spot.

 

               

               The red fox watched as the snow leopard doctor finished the blood pressure check and then removed the cuff from his upper arm.  The doctor was aware of the keen eyes on him, a far cry from the listless uncaring ones he’d seen days before.

               “Doc, how close was I?” the tod asked.

               The feline reached into his smock, extracted a folded sheet of paper, and handed it over.  The vulpine opened it up and scanned the page.  It was a death certificate; one that was filled out except for one item, a time of death.

               “That close,” he commented.

               “Mr. Wilde, you were down to the last…’dreg’, of life.  Your ’flame’ so low that it was barely there.  Just a touch more…”

               The doctor put his stuff into his bag.

               “Then, about an hour ago, I get a call from the tech monitoring your vitals.  She said that they were all on the rise.  When I got to the desk they were almost half way to being normal.”

               The spotted cat pulled up a chair that was just a little big for him and sat down on it.  Nick was used to ‘reading’ mammals and the expression on the doctor’s face held a mix of curiosity, a bit of wonder, and, maybe, even a touch of awe.

               “It was your brainwave activity that amazed her and me.  For someone in a deep coma they showed a mind having serious activity.  A lot of it indicated that you were in a highly active dream state.  Something you had not shown from the time we first rigged you up to the sensors.”

               A few seconds of silence.

               “That went on for nearly 17 minutes and in that time your other vitals returned to their normal states.  Next, the waves calmed for a moment then hit a peak that’s as high as any I’ve ever seen, then they all dropped to levels that were consistent with someone in a normal state of sleep.  You woke up some…”

               The doc consulted the clock on one wall.

               “…some 24 minutes ago and, here we are.”

               Dodson stopped and waited.  Nick knew what he wanted, hoped he could give it to him.

               “I did have a dream, a very vivid one,” the fox said.  “At first…”

 

 

               Bunnyburrow, main medical center:

 

               Judith L. Hopps scanned the paper her doctor, Selene Bensen, had given her.  Except for her own name, it read exactly the same as Nick’s.  As Judy read, she heard the medical doe tell her what had happened after she arrived at the hospital.

               “…accident with the tractor was bad but not seriously life threatening…don’t know why you kept slipping away…about an hour ago your vitals…brain wave activity as high as…and now, you’re back with us.”

               The doctor finished her talk and Judy felt her gaze upon her.  She looked up to see the expression of hopeful curiosity on Selene’s face.

               “I had a dream.  It seemed terribly…no, wondrously, real.”

               She went silent for a few heartbeats.

               “I met someone in it and we…talked things over; made one another aware that our lives could…can…will be better.”

               Another quiet.

               “I made a promise to him.  And I want to do what I can to keep it,” Judy finished.


	2. Getting There

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Short (two pages) chapter. I'm in uncharted "waters" after this one so it's likely to go into "Slow Burn" territory.
> 
> Judy and Nick get to work on their new paths. Sharla is invited to come along by her friend.

 

Bunny Burrow:

 

               Once more, Sharla looked over the list she held.  The black fleeced ewe was in awe of what was on the paper.

               “Good grief!  And I thought the curriculum for her criminology degree was ambitious!”

               “Major: Astrophysics/Astronomy.  Minor: Writing composition.” read the heading.

               The listing wasn’t just for a semester nor a year of three semesters.  They were strung out over five years.

               “Judy definitely knows what she wants.  A good switch from the criminology major she was originally working on,” she thought.  “A lot of that can be applied to her new major and minor, leaving her to concentrate on the maths and sciences.  And the writing stuff will help her in composing the research papers she’ll have to do.”

               Nevertheless, it would be a grueling task, one that made the ewe quiver.  She looked up to her friend who sat across the table set outside in front of Gideon’s bakery and café.  The bunny doe wore her usual long sleeved flannel shirt and jeans attire.  Nothing showed of the accident that had badly injured her several weeks before.  Sharla shuddered at the memory of Judy’s parents bewilderment and despair as she kept slipping more and more towards death and no one could explain why or do anything to stop it.  She was visiting them when the call came that they should come to the hospital right away.

               “She’s…gone?” asked the grim faced Stu.

               “No sir.  She’s awake and talking,” the doctor said.

               Sharla drove Bonnie and Stu there and accompanied them, at their insistence, to Judy’s room.

               “Don’t hug her,” Judy’s doctor, Selene Bensen, told them.  “She’s still recovering from the surgery and will be on the delicate side for another week or so.”

               There she was, sitting up in bed and looked to them when they came in.   When Sharla saw those bright purple eyes she knew her longtime friend was back.  Several days later, Judy was discharged from the hospital with orders to avoid strenuous activity for the next three weeks.  Judy adhered to those orders but only just.  She walked a lot and attended one of the produce stands as much as she could.  And in the evenings she was on the computer researching astronomy, astrophysics, and a number of other connected subjects.  As she did, Judy built up her college course list, the one that Sharla now held in her hands.

               “You’re sure you can handle all of this,” the ewe said.

               “No, but I want to.  I’ve got some lost time to make up for,” Judith said.

               “Okay,” Sharla replied.

               Her friend’s amethyst eyes gazed at her in a way the sheep could not read.

               “Yes?” she queried.

               “Sharla, we intend to go places that mammals only dream of today,” Judy said.  “I’m inviting you to come with us.”

               Pause.

               “’Us’?  Whose ‘us’?”

              

 

Zootopia Institute of Sciences and Technology:

             The college councilor examined the list of courses that the student-to-be had chosen.  It ran for five years.  It was impressive and daunting.

 

             "Seven years of aerospace engineering classes crammed into five," the councilor thought.

 

             He'd seen others who were this ambitious, most had failed.  Still, there was determination, a drive, radiating from the fox....

 

             "Quite a curriculum, Mr. Wilde," said the fox squirrel. "What is your goal?"

 

             "The goal is to go farther than anyone has before.  To reach places that mammals have, today, only imagined," he said.

 

             A few seconds of silence passed, then he added...

 

             "And to inspire others to do the same, or more."

 

             Another pause.

 

             “And, should…when I meet her again, there is someone I want to bring with me,” he said.

 

             The councilor thought on that, then stood and extended his paw hand to the fox.  Nick took it with his own.

 

             "Then I welcome you to our college," he said.  "And may you succeed far beyond your wildest expectations."

              

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those who might be in need of some inspirational music, I recommend this. It helped me settle this chapter out.
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e5drn6sOyQ


	3. "Meeting In Passing: Take Two"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The inspiration for this came from my reading a comment in Chapter 2 from Sapperjoe85 while listening to this video:
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e5drn6sOyQ
> 
> I thank Sapperjoe85 for their help in triggering this chapter.
> 
>  
> 
> They are close, so close. But not there, not yet.

                                                            Meeting In Passing; Take Two

 

               “The Melting Pot was founded by two mixed species couples in 1919.  They set it up as a place where straight and mixed species couples, or more, could come and enjoy a relaxed atmosphere.  The city block sized building has a large dance floor that dominates the center of the great room with the tables arranged around it.  Bars with stools are set at the east and west walls of the room.  It quickly became known for good food and drink and a mix of contemporary dance and jazz music played by live bands on stage at the north side of the dining and dance area.  Mammals are welcome as long as they conduct themselves in a civilized manner.  For those who will not, bull cape buffalo and moose bouncers will ‘conduct’ violators to the doors and evict them.  Two violations earns one a permanent ban from the club.  After the passage of a century, The Melting Pot continues with its original mission.”

 

                                                                           Zootopia Attractions Guide: Dine and Dance section

 

 

               “To our success!” toasted the fox.

               “I’m for that!” said the weasel seated to the right of the tod.

               “And may this be only the beginning of many more successes!” added the buck Hare, raising his own glass in salute.

               The trio tapped glasses together then took sips from them.  All were dressed semiformal for the occasion.  They were celebrating being granted their first major patent, a material made of graphene that flexed and folded without breaking the bonds that gave it its incredible strength.  To top things off, their process boosted the material from being some 200 times the strength of any similar thickness of carbon steel to 317 times that of the steel.

               “With the durability, flexibility, and strength of the material we should be well on the way to getting a space elevator up and running within our lifetime,” said the hare.

               “Providing we get the funding and the authorizations,” injected the fox.  “We still have to come up with an object with enough mass to serve as the orbital anchor.”

               “Hmmmm, just read an article from a TriBurrows university site that has a group there getting better tracking and orbital data fixes on near Earth asteroids.  They listed 14 objects that, with some trajectory changes, could be brought into the right orbit.  Five of those more than fit the bill for the mass we’d need,” said the weasel.

               “You got the article saved?  I’d like to look it over, see what it would take to adjust the path of any of them of interest,” said the buck.

               “Yes, I can send it to your comp., even give you a hard copy if you want,” answered the Mustelid.

               “Do that…”

               Suddenly, the fox’s head came up!  He started to look around, then stopped himself.  His action caught his colleagues’ attention.  They saw his eyes close and a look of…contemplation(?) came to his face.

               “She’s here,” the vulpine said, softly.

               Hare and weasel looked at one another then back to their companion.

               “Who’s here?” asked Duke.

               “The one who will point the way for us.  She, and those with her, who will give our works real purpose and direction,” he said.

 

Somewhere else in the club:

 

               “He’s here?  Who’s here?” asked the black fleeced ewe as she looked at the closed eyed rabbit.

               “The one who will take us to the places we dream of,” the doe said.  “He and his have already begun making what is needed to accomplish that task.”

               “What’s he look like?” asked the ram, Sharla’s younger brother.  “We can go look for him.”

               The bunny turned her head a little to one side, then to the other.  The expression on her face was one of soft expectation, a look of things to come.

               “No.  This isn’t the time for us to meet,” said the lapin.  “In time, at the right time, we will.”

 

Back at the males’ table:

               “And then, we will do the real work!” the tod said to his mystified friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those interested, here is a video on space elevators that, I believe, covers the subject pretty well.
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dc8_AuzeYKE


	4. Bank Shot on the Weasel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Been "dry" on writing for all too long. Hoping this is the end of that for some, a long, time.
> 
> Someone suggested that I do chapters on Nick getting his team together and this is one of those.
> 
> A street hawker with a secret dream he doesn't think can happen finds out differently.
> 
>  
> 
> Note: As with many things I write I'm not really happy with this. But, as an editor I once had said "There comes the time when you have to quit fiddling with it and release into the world to fend for itself."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bank Shot (Pool or Billiards): A shot in billiards in which the player causes the cue ball or an object ball to rebound off a cushion.

                                                            Bank Shot on the Weasel

               “I’ll take off 10%!  Make that 15%!” announced the street hawker.

               He was talking to an old armadillo woman looking over the array of bootleg videos laid out on his table.  By her body language, she wasn’t that interested in anything.

               “C’mon, Lady, make me an offer!” he said.

               The mammal turned away and walked off.

               “Damn!  Just no luck today!” the weasel groused to himself.

               He looked over his display table.  The wares on it had not changed in weeks.

               “Not doing any good like this,” Duke Weaselton admitted in a rare bit of self-honesty.

               “Then do something else.”

               Duke, short for DuQuesne, leapt nearly a foot up into the air!  When he landed back on his feet, he faced the owner of that voice.

               “Dammit,” he growled while showing his teeth.

               The voice belonged to a red fox who stood about a quarter taller than himself.  Wearing khaki colored pants and a checkered dark blue colored flannel shirt, he stood at one corner of the sales table.  An oversized, for the fox, carry satchel hung at the tod’s left side.

               “What are you doin’ here, Wilde?  Last I heard you were at death’s door,” the weasel sneered.

               The tod didn’t respond immediately, instead, choosing to gaze at the smaller mammal.  Duke shifted his feet some under those emerald green eyes, eyes that seemed to look inside of him as well as at him.

               “I was,” Nick said, at last. “Then I got a reason not to go through it.”

               “Why are you here?  Shouldn’t you be finding a new partner for your pawsicle hustle?” Duke said, snidely.

               It was a low ‘shot’ at the fox, Duke knew damned well that Finnick’s death had hit Wilde hard so he expected the vulpine to get angry.  Nothing happened, not even the slightest twitch in the fox’s body, or the gaze on the weasel.

               “Duke, you like doing this?” the tod asked.

               “Yeah!  It’s great!  Got all kinds of mammals lining up to buy me out!  What do you think?!”

               Pause.

               “I think you know you’re wasting your time, and life.  I think, given the chance, you want to be doing something else, something more satisfying to the dreams you hold in your head,” Nick said.

               “Hah!  What would you know about any dreams I might have?!”

               Eyes never leaving the weasel, Nick’s left paw opened the carry satchel and he extracted a worn backpack from it; a backpack sized for a weasel.  Though he recognized it, a part of Duke hoped that it was some kind of illusion or magic trick.  Still looking to Weaselton, Nick unzipped the pack, reached a paw inside, and extracted three magazines.  One by one, he placed them on the table so Duke could see them.  The three issues of “Sky and Telescope” were worn from the many times he had read through them.  They were joined by a trio of issues of “Astronomy” magazines.

               “Those dreams,” Nick said.

               Several copies of aerospace engineering and design mags landed on the table.  Their appearance more worn than the previous six.

               “And those.”

               The next thing brought out was a thin folder that was held out, unopened, to the smaller mammal.  A series of emotions roiled about in Duke’s head.  Anger at being found out (he thought he’d hidden the pack in a spot close by that no one would…) and embarrassment for the same thing.  The only reason he didn’t explode in a fit of hot profanity was that he could not detect the slightest bit of mockery or snideness in the fox.  Only a sense of...waiting expectation.  He took the folder from Nick and just looked at it.

               “Have…you…”

               “No, I haven’t,” the tod said.  “Why don’t you show me.”

               Duke hesitated, the only other person, to date, he’d shown the folder’s contents to was his sister, Karrin.  Her advice to him, to go for it, echoed in his head.  His explanations as to why not both angered and shamed him.

               “Dammit!  I don’t need to be ashamed of…”

               He quashed the impulse to look about and see if there was anyone else around.   If there was, screw ‘um!  Flipping the cover open, Duke pulled out four copies of a page that was in one of those engineering mags.  It was a detailed concept illustration of a crewed spacecraft cockpit.   There were three stations in it: pilot, copilot, and engineer.  Three of the photos had parts, controls and displays and such, circled with notations written down around them.  The fourth one was clean.  With almost loving care, the mustelid laid them out side-by-side on the table.  Duke felt a yearning want nudging him and, for a few seconds, he forgot those limitations that kept him…

               “That what you want, Wilde?!  To see me dream bigger than I can go?!” the weasel growled.

               For a dozen heartbeats, the vulpine, his expression serenely neutral, said nothing.

               “Dreaming big is the start of doing big things,” Nick said, at last.  “But if you don’t do anything about it…”

               The fox pulled another folder out of the pack, then handed it to Duke.

               “Go ahead, read it,” Wilde said.

               Opening it, Weaselton’s eyes were greeted with the first of several pages.  With slow deliberate care he scanned through them one by one.  He recognized just about all of the courses on the curriculum, there was something similar to this stashed where he lived.  The last page was a series of scores from a battery of college entry tests.  They ranged from good to great.

               “Going to make the world a better place, Wilde?” Duke said cynically.

               The fox didn’t answer right away.

               “Maybe.  But, by the time I’m done, it will, I hope, be at least a different place than it is today,” Nick said.  “You want to help me shake things up?”

               Duke looked up.

               “Why you askin’ me?  We’re not friends!”

               “True.  But you have the dream, and it runs in the same direction as mine.  So, again, you want to help me rattle cages?” Nick replied.

               Quiet.

               “And if I…we fail?” Duke asked.

               For the first time in this conversation he saw the fox smile.

               “Oh, we’ll do that more than a few times.  Likely, in the course of things, a lot of times,” the tod answered.  “Failure is part of the learning, and advancing, process.”

               Hope and want clamored for what was being offered.  Still, a near lifetime of disappointment and pessimism would not go down without a fight.

               “I don’t have money for this.  And how likely are they to accept me, a weasel, into college?”

               Pause.

               “Turn over that scores page,” Nick said.

               Flipping the paper over, Duke saw the word “ACCEPTED” in bold letters and there was a start date, 27 days from now, penned in.

               “The Mammal Inclusion Initiative may have failed in Zootopia but the colleges and universities are different.  We are a highly technical society and getting more so every day.  Mammals wanting to get into STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) fields are VERY much in demand,” Wilde said. “As to money, there’s all kinds of financial assistance available, a lot of it you don’t even have to repay as long as you complete your degree…or degrees.  If need be, I’ll float you a no interest loan to start.”

               There it was, damned fox had ‘kicked’ all of the excuses out of the way.

               “All you have to do is go for it,” he said to himself.

               Looking at the cockpit image again, Duke imagined himself in the pilot’s seat.  The thought conjured up that image in his mind’s eye.  Then something else appeared.  There was someone seated in the copilot’s position.  The mammal was about Duke’s size and possessed of ears that were almost a third as long as his body height.  And, at the engineer’s station, someone who….  A quick shake of his head and then he looked at the image again.  The seats were, as they always had been, empty.

               “But they don’t have to stay that way,” Duke whispered.

               Nicholas Wilde waited for Weaselton’s decision

               “I’m in,” he said, at last.  


**Author's Note:**

> My thanks to Stubat for doing a betaread and suggesting some changes, most of which I took, to make this something of a better read.


End file.
